Spring is near and the busy season will hit before anyone knows it. It might be time for your landscape company to add a newly trained crew, but hiring is far from easy. Would the new sets of hands check off skills you need the crews to have? How many people do you need to crew up? Do they fit within your company culture? Are they willing to learn to work within your systems?
These are a few questions that keep landscapers from adding new people to their teams. We’ll check out how your landscaping company can bring on a newly trained crew by spring and win more work throughout the season.
Do You NEED that Extra Crew?
There’s only so much work someone can get done in a day. You can free time by working smarter, bringing in equipment that works harder, or taking out the junk that eats at your work day. While you can and should review every part of your business, sometimes it just needs another pair of hands to help lift the load.
There are some things to consider before deciding to bring on another crew:
- How did your company perform last season?
- Was your company working deeper into the year without slowing down?
- How healthy is your sales funnel, are you checking in on previous clients for more work, and are you turning away any contracts
- Did your crew(s) miss any deadlines?
These questions aren’t even scratching the surface of other factors (skills, culture, positional, full-time or subcontractor, etc) to consider when bringing on a crew. It’s one of the biggest investments a business owner can make and can make or break any growth momentum with the $125,000 upfront price tag. While risk is involved in almost every business decision, there is serious damage prevention business owners can do when researching whether to add another crew.
How to Meet the Cost adding Another Crew
Adding another crew isn’t the moment to pinch pennies. You’re investing in more than just people, needing to purchase all the tools and equipment they need to get the job done. A truck, landscaping tools, electric or gas handheld equipment, and a laptop or cell phone are just the basics for your brand new crew.
These costs are steep and eat into your cash if you can afford those upfront costs. This is often the major roadblock that keeps many landscape companies from making purchases to get ahead of their growth.
There are some things to consider before deciding to bring on another crew:
- Using the cash your business has to make the purchases.
- Taking out a loan to make the purchases.
Loans don’t have to be scary. They can be fantastic tools to take away risk from emptying out your bank account. Businesses don’t want to spend all your cash to the point where you can’t pay your crew and yourself for all the hard work you’re putting your business through.
LMN created a lending platform specifically designed for landscapers to help achieve their business growth goals without the hassle of negotiating with banks or predatory lenders. LMN Lend finds the right lending options for businesses to get the cash they need to add crews, make major equipment purchases, secure needed materials and supplies, fund payroll, and any other business related expense that would require financial support. In this specific case, a business owner could tap into LMN Lend to get the cash they need to hire a new crew without having to worry about whether or not the business could afford the cost of growth.
Training Your New Crew
You’ve hired the crew, purchased the equipment, tools, and everything you’d need to start work. There’s only one step before the shovel hits the dirt: training. Standards need to be set for your crew to work within the systems that your business uses to keep safe, deliver high quality results, and keep efficient and profitable through every job.
Some new hires might not have the experience, but can catch up quickly with some training. It’s tough because you have to find time to train the crew with everything there is to know. Training cuts into revenue generating time to develop your crew, but not everything needs to be done in the yard. Travel time is a timesink of unbillable hours that couldn’t be productive until now.
Greenius offers training solutions for crew members to complete on the go. Training from anywhere keeps crew members productive, chipping away at the wasted unbillable hours riding shotgun in the truck from site to site. Complete courses and modules from anywhere to get all the key skilled trades knowledge crew members need to know on the job. There’s a library of courses in English and Spanish that cover topics from: Equipment Training, Supervisor Training, Health & Safety, and Specialty Training like plant transportation and pruning.
Get Started.
Getting cash should never be a roadblock to business growth. If a new crew is what your business needs to reach new heights, get started with LMN Lend to get the money you need as quick as 24 hours.
